July and August in the Veg Patch

I started this blog to record what we have done in the patch, so that next year I can look back and reflect on what worked or didn't. So far this year I think we can claim success - we haven't bought a vegetable from the shops since May and there is sufficient variety that we don't get bored. Currently on the menu is leuttice, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, chillis, melons (OK, one so far but still!), rainbow chard, salad cabbage, red cabbage, the last of the strawberries, raspberries, potatoes, runner beans, french beans, frozen broad beans and peas, squashes/courgettes, carrots, beetroot, onions, garlic, basil, corriander, dill, parsley, sage, oregano and mint.


In May, I mentioned my big squash experiment. This inolved making a lasagne on top of undug turf using unrotted compost, horse manure and erm...a shower curtain and planting through it. It looked a bit like this:

Well, I am pleased to report to all of my fellow lazy gardeners out there, IT WORKS! This is how it looks today:

 

The plants needed watering in the first few weeks to get established, but since then I have done nothing except harvest squillions of lovely shiny squashes and courgettes.

The strategy of 'less is more' on the tomato plant front has worked well in the greenhouse, where we have had lots of tigerella and beefsteak tomatoes.

Green peppers and for the first time, Picollino peppers (grown from saved seed) have been a real success:

Piccolino's are like normal peppers just smaller  - so you can roast and stuff with garlic cream cheese. Mmmmm.

Three cucumber vines have kept us in cucumbers nicely all summer.

My first (and only) melon.



 The runners keep on coming and the remainder of the broad beans are drying out so that I can use the seed next year.

Flat leaf parsley has been fab this year! Next to the leaf beet as spinach has been a failure - too hot and dry.

And lastly, the gorgeous red cabbage- fairly untouched by caterpillars. Can't wait for spicy braised red cabbage this autumn.

 

Summer holiday...sort of.

While catching up on some of my favorite blogs, I have just stumbled upon my last post and realised that once again, a whole month has slipped by since I last posted.

In my defence, it has been summer, and although we haven't gone anywhere (I wish!), I have felt like we have had a bit of a holiday from the hard slog of running a smallholding. In summer there is not much to be done besides mowing and picking - it has been so wet that things have watered themselves. 

It is lovely around here at this time of the year and most evenings I try to get out for a mooch in the surrounding countryside, just taking in the summer . This is what it looks like round these parts:

The hedgerows cast dappled shadows on the baking tarmac lanes...

Pretty wild flowers brighten up the long grass...

Even at 8pm the sun is really powerful...

Footpaths across fields become more like corridors (anyone seen the film 'Signs'? Shudder!)...

The sweetcorn tassels are still fresh and pinky...but will soon darken and shrivel when the corn is ready.

The fields are golden as far as the eye can see with scratchy, rustling wheat...

...which is ripening nicely.

Not to mention the festivals - this was the excellent Farmfest:

Possibly the most relaxed, unpretentious and non-commercial festival you will find...

...and almost certainly the only one with a giant inflatable cow atop the main stage. This is how we do it in the Westcountry! 

I have also moved jobs to a much better, closer and even more importantly - part time, job. After five years of relentless commuting and never having enough time, we have decided that, with food and energy prices rising at a stupendous rate, it is time to make a real go of being self sufficient. So I am now home two days a week to concentrate on the farmstead - and to be a better blogger too! Still a Part Time Smallholder, but a much less stressed and more productive one.

Till next time.